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 22 Sep 2006 @ 09:40
If we are too busy, if we are carried away every day by our projects, our uncertainty, our craving, how can we have the time to stop and look deeply into the situation---our own situation, the situation of our beloved one, the situation of our family and of our community, and the situation of our nation and of the other nations?
---Thich Nhat Hanh
Negotiations then turned to the amount of time that a detainee's suffering must last before the tactic amounted to a war crime. Administration officials wanted "prolonged" mental or physical symptoms, while the senators wanted something milder. They settled on "serious and nontransitory mental harm, which need not be prolonged."
---from The Seattle Times edition of the LA Times story by Julian E. Barnes and Richard Simon
[link]
[link]
The Bush administration had to empty its secret prisons and transfer terror suspects to the military-run detention centre at Guantánamo this month in part because CIA interrogators had refused to carry out further interrogations and run the secret facilities, according to former CIA officials and people close to the programme.
---from Financial Times (London)
September 20, 2006
[link]
Photo of Bush demanding torture (or "alternative" interrogation) by Khue Bui for Newsweek
September 25th issue
I can't recall a morning when the headlines were more confusing and even contradictory. The LA Times says "Bush Bows to Senators on Detainees." [link] The Washington Post says, in editorial, "The Abuse Can Continue; Senators won't authorize torture, but they won't prevent it, either." [link] Bloomberg has it that "President to Define Prisoner Abuse in Agreement With Senators By James Rowley
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush would be able to write secret rules on how to treat suspected terrorists during interrogations under an agreement the administration worked out with dissenting Republican senators." The New York Times editorial says, "Here is a way to measure how seriously President Bush was willing to compromise on the military tribunals bill: Less than an hour after an agreement was announced yesterday with three leading Republican senators, the White House was already laying a path to wiggle out of its one real concession.
About the only thing that Senators John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham had to show for their defiance was Mr. Bush’s agreement to drop his insistence on allowing prosecutors of suspected terrorists to introduce classified evidence kept secret from the defendant. The White House agreed to abide by the rules of courts-martial, which bar secret evidence." [link]
The bottom line of course is to get some kind of legislation before the election in November to protect the Bush-Cheney gang from prosecution under our own War Crimes Act. Should the Democrats win control of either House or both and regain subpoena power in committee, the business-as-usual of spreading the neo-Con brand freedom might be slowed down a mite. Incidentally, Robert Kennedy Jr. unblinkingly expands his campaign about the "e-government revolution" (that's a Diebold Electronic Elections Systems slogan by the way) in the October 5th issue of Rolling Stone, now online. [link]
But let me ask you this: what does it take to reduce a relatively civilized population to a condition of animal savagery? And if it happens, is that necessarily a bad thing? Animals are creatures of nature with instincts of survival. Savages are people with traditions of tribal gathering, hunting, celebration and warfare that perhaps are closer to nature than citified people. The Wild West was tamed sometimes in savage ways to show who was boss. Is this not how the world always has been? Is this how things really are? More >
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 15 Sep 2006 @ 09:09
The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of the divine.
---St. John of the Cross
The hermit doesn't sleep at night:
in love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
that rustles the trees
rustles him too.
---Ching An
The trouble is that you think you have time.
---Zen master
The picture's of Daytona, in 1957.
Yes, we accuse Rove/Bush of keeping the masses in cowering fear, but who's scared? My redneck neighbors have decals on their pickups pissing on fear. Their kids tool through the woods on their 4-wheelers with nary a care everyday. Those folks Support Our Troops with flags waving, trusting the security of the heartland to the War on Terror. The biggest horror of kids at school is if pizza gets taken off the cafeteria menu.
Yesterday I emailed a link OU Prof Bob Sheak had sent along to an article at TomPaine by Robert L. Borosage. [link] My friend Paul Quintanilla left a couple of comments about it here in the entry just below, but concluded with these questions~~~
14 Sep 2006 @ 22:43 by Quinty @68.226.88.25 : And yet another thing -
Why haven't the Democrats abopted Borosage's strategy?
After all, the idea of a "Manhattan project" for clean and self-sustaining energy resources has been around for a long time. The biggest argument, I guess, against it being cost. But we have no problem throwing billions away monthly on a wasteful war. For that we have unending funding.
(For the simple minded - dare I say? - violence is always an easy solution. By exerting a superior force of arms you can be sure to win. No questions asked. That is the current course we are on now.)
And the other approaches Borosage raised are fairly obvious too. But do many Democrats still feel they are too hot politically to handle? Does Bush's ship have to sink further before they may become palatable? What are the Democrats afraid of? Of the unknown? The future? Of getting it wrong? Of not being loved?
Then they don't deserve to lead. But then who do we got?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ More >
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 3 Sep 2006 @ 10:02
You are the light,
You are the refuge,
There is no place to take shelter but yourself.
---Inscription over the Buddha's ashes
Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson
The morning after the storm
the melons alone
know nothing of it.
---Sodo
Patricia McDonough, a professional photographer with a fisheye lens, made this picture from her apartment’s living room within minutes of the first airliner’s impact.
You have to grit your teeth just to get through Garrison Keillor's gripping review this morning of a new book called Watching The World Change: The Stories Behind The Images Of 9/11. I'm trying to imagine what reading the book would be like. Here is Garrison, taking you through it~~~
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The New York Times
September 3, 2006
Bearing Witness
By GARRISON KEILLOR
It was a perfect late-summer day in New York, the sort of day when a person feels terribly lucky to be in the city. A man named Pavel Hlava was showing his brother Josef around town and raised his video camera toward the World Trade Center just in time to catch a bright object flashing in the sky and then a puff of smoke from the north face of the north tower. A French filmmaker, Jules Naudet, who was making a documentary about firefighters, was with a fire truck responding to a gas leak at Lispenard and Church Streets downtown when he heard the roar of a jet engine and raised his camera to catch the plane too. And so did two Webcams from an apartment window in Brooklyn. It was 8:46 a.m. on the 11th of September, 2001. At 8:49 a.m., CNN went live with a shot of the towers from a camera on the West Side. The second plane hit the south tower at 9:03, and by that time dozens of cameras were on the scene, aiming upward. More >
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 28 Aug 2006 @ 09:27
It's amazing, a wonder, that one wakes up in the morning.
---Nagarjuna
Better a handful of quietness
Than both hands full of toil
And much chasing the wind.
---Ecclesiastes
I have to let go of the need to know so much. What we can know is so small---the holiness around is so large. Now I trust in simplicity, simplicity and love.
---Hindu sage
This morning I received an atypical communique from a friend who is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Sociology at Ohio University. Ordinarily he checks stuff I send out with a meticulous eye and lets me know when I get carried away. This time his eye seems a little moist and I readily admit he got me that way too...with this wonderful story~~~
When I was quite young, my father had one of the first telephones in our neighbourhood. I remember well the polished old case fastened to the wall. The shiny receiver hung on the side of the box. I was too little to reach the telephone, but used to listen with fascination when my mother used to talk to it.
Then I discovered that somewhere inside the wonderful device lived an amazing person - her name was "Information Please" and there was nothing she did not know. "Information Please" could supply anybody's number and the correct time.
My first personal experience with this genie-in-the-bottle came one day while my mother was visiting a neighbour. Amusing myself at the tool bench in the basement, I whacked my finger with a hammer. The pain was terrible, but there didn't seem to be any reason in crying because there was no one home to give sympathy. I walked around the house sucking my throbbing finger, finally arriving at the stairway.
The telephone! Quickly, I ran for the footstool in the parlour and dragged it to the landing. Climbing up, I unhooked the receiver in the parlour and held it to my ear. "Information Please," I said into the mouthpiece just above my head. A click or two and a small clear voice spoke into my ear. "Information."
"I hurt my finger. . ." I wailed into the phone. The tears came readily enough now that I had an audience. "Isn't your mother home?" came the question.
"Nobody's home but me." I blubbered.
"Are you bleeding?"
"No," I replied. "I hit my finger with the hammer and it hurts."
"Can you open your icebox?" she asked. I said I could. "Then chip off a little piece of ice and hold it to your finger," said the voice.
After that, I called "Information Please" for everything. I asked her for help with my geography and she told me where Philadelphia was. She helped me with my math. She told me my pet chipmunk that I had caught in the park just the day before would eat fruits and nuts. Then, there was the time Petey, our pet canary died. I called "Information Please" and told her the sad story. She listened, then said the usual things grown-ups say to soothe a child. But I was un-consoled. I asked her, "Why is it that birds should sing so beautifully and bring joy to all families, only to end up as a heap of feathers on the bottom of a cage?"
She must have sensed my deep concern, for she said quietly, "Paul, always remember that there are other worlds to sing in." Somehow I felt better. Another day I was on the telephone. "Information Please."
"Information," said the now familiar voice.
"How do you spell 'fix'?" I asked.
All this took place in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. When I was 9 years old, we moved across the country to Boston. I missed my friend very much. "Information Please" belonged in that old wooden box back home, and somehow never thought of trying the tall, shiny new phone that sat on the table in the hall. As I grew into my teens, the memories of those childhood conversations never really left me. Often, in moments of doubt and perplexity I would recall the serene sense of security I had then. I appreciated now how patient, understanding, and kind she was to have spent her time on a little boy.
A few years later, on my way west to college, my plane put down in Seattle. I had about half an hour or so between planes. I spent 15 minutes or so on the phone with my sister, who lived there now. Then, without thinking what I was doing, I dialed my hometown operator and said, "Information, Please." Miraculously, I heard the small, clear voice I knew so well, "Information." I hadn't planned this but I heard myself saying, "Could you please tell me how to spell 'fix'?"
There was a long pause. Then came the soft spoken answer, "I guess your finger must have healed by now."
I laughed. "So it's really still you," I said. "I wonder if you have any idea how much you meant to me during that time." "I wonder," she said, "if you know how much your calls meant to me. I never had any children, and I used to look forward to your calls." I told her how often I had thought of her over the years and I asked if I could call her again when I came back to visit my sister.
"Please do, she said. "Just ask for Sally."
Three months later I was back in Seattle. A different voice answered "Information." I asked for Sally. "Are you a friend?" she asked. "Yes, a very old friend," I answered.
"I'm sorry to have to tell you this", she said. "Sally had been working part-time the last few years because she was sick. She died five weeks ago."
Before I could hang up she said, "Wait a minute. Is your name Paul?"
"Yes."
"Well, Sally left a message for you. She wrote it down in case you called. Let me read it to you. The note says, 'Tell him I still say there are other worlds to sing in. He'll know what I mean.'"
I thanked her and hung up. I knew what Sally meant. Never underestimate the impression you may make on others. On that note I would like to ask you to remember how much difference one person can make in someone's life. More >
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 26 Aug 2006 @ 15:33
When a dog is chasing after you, whistle for him.
---Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today's begging is finished: at the crossroads
I wander by the side of the Buddhist shrine
Talking with some children.
Last year a foolish monk.
This year, no change!
---Ryokan
The temple bell stops
but the sound keeps coming
out of the flowers.
---Basho
How do you tell the difference between a member of the Boomer generation and someone from the generation just before? Here's one way: ask if there's a preference toward a trumpet or an electric guitar. If you're a boy 16 or 17 in many cultures, you like things loud and fast. Boomers love a couple guys on stage with amplified guitars let out full. Whatever the generation that came before them is called prefers a trumpet section in a band, no microphone needed. Both sounds make your hair stand on end and are wonderful, but most Boomers seem to have let the wind instruments lapse into near extinction.
Anyone who knows the name Maynard Ferguson probably can tell you what it was like the first time you heard him...and maybe what the song was. For me it was a feature for him, arranged by Shorty Rogers, of the Bob Haggart-Johnny Mercer ballad "What's New." Joe Rico played it on the radio nearly every day out of that little AM station in Niagara Falls. I remember going downtown to the Music Box record shop (I must have been 12 or 13) and plunking down my 50 cents for a 45 rpm recording of it. (The other side was terrible: "The Hot Canary".) It featured a range of the trumpet previously considered impossible on just one instrument. Maynard played low down into a trombone sound...and then all the way up within seconds to an octave and a half above high C, where generally flutes take over. The arrangement started slow, then changed tempo to way up, finishing off with Maynard pasting notes higher and higher until he nailed that last one that made people gasp throughout his 60 year career of doing it.
At the time Maynard (we always called him by his first name) was the high note man with the Stan Kenton Orchestra...but he was just about to leave along with over half the band for adventures on the West Coast. Us guys didn't find that out for a while, and so in the meantime we started collecting all the Kenton records we could find. We thought every high trumpet on them must be Maynard. Capitol put out records then without any dates on them, so little did we know we were listening to Kenton from 10 years earlier when Chico Alvarez, also from Montreal by the way, may have been the guy. Didn't matter though: we were getting turned on to some of the most radical orchestral music (and loudest) of the 20th Century. More >
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